


Chomp

by Esmethewitch



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux is a fuckboy, Background Kaydel Ko Connix/Rey, Bad Sex, Biting, Crack Treated Seriously, Dominant Rose Tico, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Espionage, Eventual Humor, F/M, Fear Of Rape/Non-Con, Feelings, Female Friendship, Happy Ending, Hux became a spy so Rose would sext him, I'm sorry for making Hux into a tinder fuckboy, Kinky Armitage Hux, Masochism, Not As Dark As The Tags Make It Sound, Rose Tico has Standards, Rose is the token straight friend & the rest of the cast is worried about her, Sex for Favors, Sexting, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Humor, Spy Armitage Hux, background stormpilot, biting kink, but he cares about Rose in the end, more humor than smut, that's it that's the fic, well kinky stuff for favors that is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:53:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24366856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: Hux didn't fight back properly when Rose bit him because he liked it, in spite of himself. He takes her aside and offers her a mutually beneficial agreement.Rose agrees to bite him. Just bite him, no nudity, no sex. Later, it turns into so much more.Or:The story of how Rose becomes a soft Dominatrix who sends Hux Feet Pics and saves the Resistance, while learning Galaxy-shattering secrets and developing feelings for a certain ginger General against her better judgement.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 119
Kudos: 93





	1. First Bite

She bit him. There was nothing else for it. She was on her knees on the hard floor with her hands bound behind her and waiting for death while this awful, greasy man towered above her and called her vermin. He gloated about destroying about her planet, about destroying  _ her.  _ So when he carelessly let his hand gloved in butter-soft black leather stray to her chin, in his arrogance thinking her harmless as some tamed fluffy housecat, she lunged forward in defiance of him and her own aching muscles to inflict what little punishment she could upon this tyrant.

Her mouth was flooded with the bitter taste of leather polish, and his fingers wriggled like trapped snakes between her jaws. Beneath her teeth, she felt the subtle give of flesh. She expected yelling. She expected a jackbooted kick to her ribs, or a punch to her face with his other fist. After all, the man had armed guards and two hands.

But instead, he grabbed onto his wrist with his free hand and pulled back, shrieking like a little girl. No, not a little girl. Rose was always quiet. When one certain boy in third grade pinched her and pulled her hair every day at Morning Assembly, he never got a peep out of her. This horrid speck of humanity failed at his game of making her squeal. One day, assuming that Rose’s silence meant weakness, he tried to shove his hand down her pants. At first, she watched this performance in quiet horror. Then, she realized what he was doing and felt his clammy fingers at the hem of her shirt. She slapped his hand away, then broke his nose. All without making a sound. The boy screamed and cried.

Rose would have taunted Hux for weakness, or asked him why his guards cared so little about their superior’s safety that they just stood there.  _ Wimpy. Pathetic,  _ she would have said.  _ You’re just like any other bully. Not so brave when the girl half your size fights back.  _ But she couldn’t say that. Her mouth was full. After an airless, polish-flavored age, the Stormtrooper holding her back finally managed to pull her off of him. His fingers gave a comical wet  _ pop  _ as they exited her mouth. He stared at his hand, then at her in horror. Rose looked up. Her position gave her a perfect view of his groin. Was he... yes, that was a bulge. The Little General was finally roused by the prospect of danger and trying to stand at attention. It shouldn’t be surprising that such a horrible person would get off on nasty stuff.

“My plans have changed,” he informed the Stormtroopers. “Take FN-2187 to the cells. I’ll take the girl.” He grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, dragging her up. 

A pit opened in Rose’s stomach. This was not good. She’d heard stories about how bad things could get for pretty Rebels during the days of the Empire. It followed that the First Order would be even worse.

“NO!” Finn was struggling against his captors. “Just let her go. I put her up to this. It’s my fault she’s here at all. Hux, if you do this, you’re no better than----”

“Shut him up,” Hux said. 

One of the troopers clapped a hand over Finn’s mouth. They dragged him away. A couple more Stormtroopers hovered around them. 

“Leave us,” Hux said.

“Sir? Are you sure?” Doubt was hard to convey across a vocoder, but this trooper managed it somehow.

“Yes. Up, scum. Walk with me.”

Rose glared at him as they hurried away, his bony gloved fingers digging into her arm. Hmm. Her hands were bound, but she had a perfectly good pair of feet. She shrank from his grasp and tried to twist away from him. 

“Stop that.” There was the click of a blaster cocking, and she turned her head. There it was. He was armed, she was weaponless and her hands were bound.

“Funny you didn’t remember having that earlier.”

“Shut up.”

“Or what? You’ll be extra-rough with me? Maybe this makes you feel like some sort of conqueror, but all it means to the rest of the Galaxy is that you’re too much of a bastard for anyone to give you what you want, so you have to take it instead. Pathetic.”

The muzzle of the blaster drew closer to her. “I’ll thank you not to take that tone with me. And never, ever call me a  _ bastard.” _ His voice grew softer, and that was more terrifying than any of his screamed speeches.

But if Rose was going to die painfully or be tied to a wall in some horribly cliched sex dungeon, she wasn’t going to make this easy on him. “Yes, sah. Quite. Oi am ever sew sorry for moi insolent behavior. Hwhat tone would milord like me to take with his worshipfullness?” This was her best approximation of an Imperial accent. “Tally-ho,” she added. 

“Say nothing until you hear my proposition,” he hissed. “And stop that horrid famiscile of an accent. It does not become you.”

Stars, this was a long corridor. If people saw her flailing about, maybe they’d be scandalized and horrified that their commander was some sort of sexual freak? But nobody came by. Oh well. Knowing the First Order, they might not do anything about it anyway.

“A proposition? Oh, sah, moi lordship flatters me. Oi am but a simple country girl, unfit to be the wife of such a prominent man in Society. But Oi am a respectable woman too, and I hope you shall be a gentleman in return.”

Hux winced. “It’s not a marriage proposal. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“I will not be some sort of kept woman!” Rose’s cheeks flamed. “And you know what? If you stick that sad little cock anywhere on me, I’ll bite it off. Or maybe it’s been years since I was tested for anything. If you do manage to stick it in me, it could turn green and fall off.”

Hux’s face turned paler then ever. “That was not my intention with you,” he said. They reached a nondescript door. He swiped his wrist at a panel, and it hissed open. He shoved her through. Rose took in her surroundings. It looked like a showroom for a sad, cheap furniture company. There was a table, a chair, a bed, and an incongruous ice-blue couch facing a blank wall. She stumbled onto the couch.

“It wasn’t? Oh deary, deary me, it seems that dragging a girl away with her hands in binders to one’s personal quarters means that she’s going to nothing worse than a perfectly safe job interview!”

Hux settled himself on the other side of the couch. “Here is my proposition: we help each other. You give me what I want, within certain parameters of course, then I let you and your friend go.”

“WHAT?” Rose spat on his floor. She couldn’t bite him, she couldn’t kick him, but she could do this. “Disgusting. You’re just doing this to convince yourself that I wanted this too.”

“You spat on my floor!”

“YOU WANT TO RAPE ME!” There. She said it. 

He drew back. “No. I don’t at all. This arrangement would only include things you were comfortable with.”

“I am only comfortable with your painful death,” Rose seethed.

This just made him smile. “Ah. So you  _ want  _ to hurt me.”

“Yes.”

“What would you do if it happened that we wanted the same thing?”

“You want to die?”

Hux sighed. “No. But I enjoy some levels of physical pain. When you bit me, it…”

“It gave you a stiffy. Now you want me to dress up in black leather and whip you.”

“No! Will you stop jumping to the worst possible conclusions and let me get a word in edgewise?”

“Will you stop blowing up planets and trying to kill my friends?” She stopped when she saw the look on his face. “FIne.”

“You have a very nice bite. I’d enjoy feeling it again. In private. If you are not comfortable with nudity or any other sort of sexual conduct, then there is no need for any of that.”

“Oh. Hmm. So if I bite you again, with all of my clothes on, no funny business, you’ll let me and Finn go, no strings attached.”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I did it once, I’ll do it again. Do you want to hear my terms?”

“Yes.”

“Take the binders off me.”

“Done.” He pulled a datapad out of his greatcoat pocket and tapped a couple of buttons. The binders clicked open and fell to the floor. “Anything else?”

“No touching me without permission. No jerking off around me or any other gross thing like that. No calling me scum.” She thought for a second. “Don’t talk any more than you have to either. Is that okay?”

“Agreed, Re--wait, you have a name, do you not?”

“Yes. It’s Rose.”

“Alright, Rose. Are you going to do it, then?”

She wasted no time and lunged at him, straddling his narrow thighs and shoving his gloved hand (his left this time) into her mouth, gagging him down. He still had those gloves on. Rose was tiring of the taste of leather. She drew back and caught the glove in her teeth, peeling it back and exposing pasty wrist. Abandoning the glove and fingers, she licked up his hand and worried at his wrist. It was surprisingly delicate for such a large man. She closed her jaws around it and bit. He whimpered. She licked at the red marks left behind. Beneath her thighs, he was hardening. Time to stop.

She stepped back. “Done. Now can we go?”

He panted. “Yes.”

Rose opened up Finn’s cell door. “Quick. We don’t have much time. There is a TIE that they’ll just ignore if we’re fast about it. I don’t know anything about flying TIES, but I’ll manage if you can tell me where the buttons are.”

“Rose! Stars, I thought we were both dead or worse.” They rushed to the TIE hangers and jumped in, blasting into a wobbly but still serviceable takeoff. “What happened? They just put me in a cell, no execution. You were alone with him, did he…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She could still taste that damned leather.


	2. Negotiations

Months passed. Rose mostly forgot about that terrible day with that terrible man. Unfortunately, the sight of black leather gloves now made her blush, and in her loneliest moments she found herself lying back on her thin Army mattress and sucking on a couple of her fingers. But mostly, it was fine.

Until one day, she got a comms transmission from an unknown number:  _ Hello.  _ She didn’t reply. Ten minutes later, it sent her a new message:  _ Hey.  _

_ I don’t know who you are, wrong frequency,  _ she texted back.

_ Rose Tico?  _

The correct thing to do would have been to reply: “Who?”, but it was nearly midnight and she was bored and lonely. She could hear bedsprings creak in Finn and Poe’s room next door.

_ Who are you and how did you get this frequency? _

_ I have my ways. It’s me. Hux. From the  _ Finalizer.  _ I’m a General. Does this ring a bell? _

Rose read this in his voice and grimaced.  _ Do you want me to wire you a large sum of money in exchange for the integrity of my comm/my safety? _

_ No. Why would I do that? _

_ This looks scammy.  _

_ It’s not. Now, it took some trouble to find this, but I think we can continue helping each other. _

Rose frowned.  _ I’m actually a dude. IDK why you want to RP as General Hux, you’re nasty. _

_ I know this is you, Rose. I have it on good authority that this is your personal comm. What does “RP” mean? _

_ Roleplay. You’re probably some loser in your mother’s basement with a thing for gingers. _

She received no more transmissions for nearly half an hour.  _ No, Rose, it’s me. I don’t live in a basement and I’m pretty sure my mother is dead. You bit me, remember? Can we just talk? _

Rose pursed her lips. If this really was some “stranger on the holonet” variety of creep, it would be doubtful that they knew what Rose had done to secure her freedom.  _ Take a picture of where you are now and send it to me so I know it’s you.  _

In seconds, there was a grainy holopic of Hux’s sleep-deprived mug, ginger hair lightly tousled and spreading over a pillowcase. Of course the pillowcase was black.

_ Ok. Now I know you probably aren’t zankfishing me. _

_ Zankfishing? _

_ That’s when you steal somebody’s holonet photos and pretend to be them. Somebody once set up fake social media accounts for Poe Dameron, and he had twenty people showing up at his doorstep professing their undying love for him and demanding to know why he wasn’t talking to them anymore. It was bad. _

No more messages. She was going to bed, for real this time.

_ We can still help each other. _

This was almost sad, seeing how needy Hux was. But he tried to kill her and blew up her planet. That was kind of a dealbreaker for her.  _ Hux, the next time I see your face I’m going to slap it. Hard. _

_ Ok,  _ came the prompt reply.  _ Please do. Are you free this weekend? What is the payment you want for that? Even if we don’t do this on a regular basis, we should probably figure out some sort of contract with limits to save on potential trouble. _

Rose’s jaw dropped. Furiously, she typed back:  _ Listen, I’m not a slut. I don’t kriffing do things like that. If you want that, you can pay pros you find on the HoloNet to tie you up and spank you or whatever filthy stuff you’re into. Leave me out of your sordid fantasies. _

_ That’s a shame,  _ came the reply.  _ I was going to give you some intel. Knowledge is money now, they say. At this point I don’t care if the Resistance wins so much as I want Kylo Ren to lose. Poor Resistance, they don’t know the details of our largest secret base… _

_ WHAT SECRET BASE?!  _ She had no idea if this intelligence was good, but any scrap of information was worth pursuing further.

_ I’m not going to tell you anymore because you are not open to giving me benefits in exchange for this intelligence and it’s a secret. _

_ I changed my mind,  _ Rose typed.  _ I can’t meet up with you in person, but I can send pictures. I have rules though. I won’t send full-body nudes or anything that can be traced back to me. I won’t send vids of me talking dirty. Maybe I’ll do boudoir stuff but that’s pushing it.  _ What even was boudoir photography? She didn’t really know, but she could find out and choose the option that showed the least amount of skin and mostly hid her face.

_ Perfectly fine. Can you send pictures of your feet?  _ Rose’s eyes widened. Of  _ course  _ General Hux would have some sort of foot fetish. Ugh.

_ Maybe later, if you’re good.  _ Rose smirked. She had two overgrown toenails and a nasty bruise from dropping a wrench on her foot this afternoon. Nobody was looking at her feet in this state. But she welcomed this excuse to get a pedicure.

_ Noted. Hands are nice, too.  _ Rose grinned. Even if she didn’t get any useful information out of him, she could save this conversation as potential blackmail material. 

_ Picture? _

Stars, he was so impatient. Just like the trashy boys she’d texted on dating apps under her parents’ nose at age sixteen. She never sent nudes, never even sent...feet pictures either. Every time she’d refused, they would all reply with: “ur uGly and fat anyway, bitch.” 

Hux was just like that, only older and with better grammar. Eventually, Paige found Rose crying and took the datapad away from her. She made Rose laugh with her suggestions of the things she could send the boys instead. Rose was too shy to actually do any of the things Paige recommended, but those tips would come in useful now.

_ Wait. Let me get a good one, just for you.  _ He liked it when short women threatened and bit him, and she suspected that he might have been fantasizing about her in black leather with a whip after all.  _ If you’re rude to me, I won’t send you anything at all. _

_ Sorry. _

_ What was that? _

_ Sorry, ma’am.  _

Oof. Rose liked the sound of that more than she ever thought she would. She took the comm camera and positioned it over her elbow. Click. Three minutes later of cropping the image and editing out that weird mole she’d always meant to get checked, and she sent this masterpiece photograph of dimpled skin off to General Hux of the First Order himself. She knew this was the fold of her elbow. Without context, nobody else ever would.

_ What is that?! _

_ What do you think it is?,  _ Rose typed back, vibrating with malicious glee.

_ Oh. Thank you. I will appreciate this. What is the data capacity of your comm? _

_ 8 gigacliks. Why? _

_ So I can send you this: _

Rose’s comm screen was filled with the “downloading” icon. She gasped as images of plans and Logistics datafiles flashed by.

_ Why are you doing this to the Order? _

_ I told you, Kylo Ren needs to lose. I trust you can make good use of this intelligence to make it so. Thank you for the lovely picture. _

At six AM, Finn found Rose sitting up in bed and poring over the datafiles, eyes glazed over. “I found this,” she told him. “D’you think it’s any good?”

Finn scrolled through the files and whistled. “Wow, Rose. If these are fakes, they’re damn good ones. Where did you get them?”

Rose giggled. “I think we have a mole.”


	3. Meeting

Instead of feeling pride when she sat at the same table as General Organa herself and read the datafiles, she was as jumpy as a misbehaving child called in to the principal’s office. Leia did not ask her where the datafiles came from. She took one look into Rose’s eyes, and Rose could tell that somehow, she  _ knew.  _ Maybe she didn’t know the gory details, but she could tell that Rose did not want to stand before the whole Resistance and say where these new fleet schematics and plans for a base on some world called Exegol (or was it spelled Ixigul?) came from. But Rose also knew that she’d be held back to explain privately when the rest had left.

_ You had this whole fleet stored away over there and we never heard of it??? _ , she texted Hux under the table. Rose just worked behind pipes. She was good at fixing ships, but she had no clue how one decided where to fly them to. It turned out that this process involved a lot more tedious arguing and displays with slowly loading star charts than she ever imagined. 

_ Multiple punctuation marks are vulgar,  _ he replied. The nerve. Accusing  _ her  _ of vulgarity when he was willing to betray his army for the sake of a few dirty pictures. She scrolled up to last night’s conversation. Yes, there it was.

_ You used a question mark and an exclamation point last night,  _ she reminded him.

_ That’s different. It was to exclaim and express surprise. But I fear we’re getting off-track. Yes, I never heard of this karking Sith Eternal fleet or whatever stupid Empire rebrand this is until last week. Nobody told me, after all this time. After everything I’ve done for the Order. I don’t even know what I’m here for anymore. _

_ Decorative purposes?,  _ Rose typed back, before she could stop herself. She did not know what possessed her to attempt flirting with a man who had destroyed planets. Although he wouldn’t look half bad if he got a few more hours of sleep a night, smiled more, and maybe grew a beard. If he did that, he might even be handsome. That still left his personality intact though. Even a luxurious ginger beard and a skincare routine wouldn’t salvage his perverted, evil soul. It wouldn’t bring back Hays Minor.

_ Very funny. I have to work now, and I suspect you do too. _

_ Are you going to give me a demerit for being distracted? ;)  _ Rose was laying this on thick. But if he kept his interest in her, she could keep the intel flowing and save thousands more lives.

_ No. You are not in the First Order, and as such I have no disciplinary jurisdiction over you. Why did you send me a semicolon with one parentheses? _

Did this man not understand texting?  _ It’s supposed to be a winking smiley face. ;) :D XD _

Five minutes later, he replied again:  _ Alright, I see it now. The one with a “D” is supposed to be laughing, maybe? But what does “XD” mean? _

_ That’s also laughing. _

_ Oh. Why are you wasting your time and mine with this? _

_ I just like them :).  _ Now he was probably annoyed with her for texting like a normal person, rather than some grammatically correct autogenerated work communique. Now was the time to start behaving badly for a good cause.  _ If I worked for the First Order, for some reason, would you give me a demerit for distracting you? _

_ Probably. Now get back to work. _

_ If I kept doing it, would I get more demerits? _

_ Yes. _

_ What would happen if I got too many demerits? ;)  _ After typing this, Rose felt like retching and desired nothing more than a nice hot shower. That she would take without looking too closely at her naked body.

_ Your immediate superior would review your work performance and disciplinary history. Someone from Human Relations would be at the performance review. Depending on the reasons for your demerits, you’d either get a warning, restricted privileges (e.g. delayed Shore Leave, reduced Hot Water rations, or supervision while conducting sensitive tasks) or a demotion. Since you work as a mechanical or flight engineer in the Resistance, your immediate superior officer would probably be Technical Supervisor 1st Class Jones. She’s strict but fair. I do wonder where she came from, though. “Jones” is such an outlandish name. _

Well, that was a lot. But it was useful to hear a name.  _ Would you be there at that performance review, General? _

_ If I gave you the majority of your demerits and was concerned about your performance, yes, I would be.  _

_ Would there be anything I could do to convince you to reduce my punishment at that hearing? _

_ If you could make a strong enough case for why your actions were justified within the context of your work, then yes. Ideally your superior officer and the HR staff member would review these arguments as well. So in this case, TS1 Jones and the duty officer from HR would ask you to explain yourself. I could technically override her judgements, but as your supervising officer she should have the majority of input as to the outcome of this review. _

_ I can’t just convince you in private, sir? With a demonstration of my specialized skills? :D  _ Ugh. She felt filthy. But horny men often let things slip.

_ No. That would be professionally inappropriate. Assuming you had somehow transferred into the First Order and kept your equivalent rank, you would be a Technician, Mechanic, or Specialist. Not even a non-commissioned officer. You would even be outranked by NCOs, much less a General. I’m not even supposed to be alone in a room with someone of your rank to prevent such a scenario from occurring. _

_ Oh. So you’re not into stuff like this. _

_ Like what? _

Rose sighed.  _ Never mind,  _ she tapped _.  _ At least it sounded like he wasn’t into ordering her around. She could work with that. This lukewarm response was somewhat of a relief. Onto something else, then.

“Rose?”, General Organa asked.

“Y-yes, ma’am?”

“What do you think of the current attack plan on Exegol?”

Rose gulped and squinted at the rows of little holographic squares meant to resemble Resistance ships, ringed around the triangles symbolizing First Order dreadnoughts. “Umm…” The Exegol fleet was far too big. She didn’t like their odds. “I think we should learn more before acting, with an emphasis on defending our current ships and life-support operations in preparation for battle. If these are older ships, Imperials, they probably have technical weaknesses we can exploit.” Hux would probably know about these. Wasn’t he an engineer, once, before he started climbing the chain of command? She could ask him.

“Hmm. Rose, that is a valid point. Can I delegate research of historical weaknesses of Imperial ships to you?”

“Yes, I’ll get on it.”

“Alright,” said General Organa. “We will reconvene for a final decision at this time tomorrow. I declare this meeting adjourned.” Everyone got up to leave. Rose scrambled for the door.

“Rose, do you have a minute?”, General Organa called. 

Rose froze in place. “Uh, yeah…”

“Wonderful. We need to talk about your source of intel.”

  
  



	4. Master & Apprentice

“Sit”. Rose did. Leia moved beside her. “So, someone very, very high-ranking in the First Order is sending you intelligence. That is good. But how much do you trust this person?”

Rose studied the table intently. “Only as far as I can throw him. Which isn’t very far.”

Leia folded her hands. “Do you doubt the quality of the plans he is sending you?”

“Um…” If Hux were one hundred percent evil, what  _ would  _ he do? Sending fake plans to the woman who bit him hard on the finger (an experience that gave him a cheap thrill, unfortunately) after the same woman turned into a softcore camgirl out of desperation to get these plans seemed on-brand for someone with the gall to blow up a star system and reduce a mining planet to rubble. Yes, the picture she sent him was just of her elbow, but he  _ thought  _ it was of her buttcrack. Though if he liked hands and feet, elbows might also be included on the ever-changing, appalling list of Things that Hux Finds Hot.

But then, he wanted Ren to lose and wasn’t particular about how. “I think they’re good enough. He wants to make Kylo Ren look foolish, and he’s frustrated that his superiors have told him nothing for so long. He only found out about Exegol last week. He thinks he should have been in the loop earlier.”

Leia sighed. “Then, he may be useful. Do you think you could convince him to join us?”

Rose grimaced, imagining Hux stomping around in an orange jacket or one of those puffy vests. Around people who might be able to guess what they did and said to each other. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Well, it might be worth a try. Now, is he just giving you all of this out of the goodness of his heart?”

“No! I don’t think that’s physically possible for him.”

“So why did he choose you, of all people to contact?”

They said Leia could read minds, sometimes. Best to get it over with. “I think he’s attracted to me. We’ve...communicated, and he’s expressed an interest.”  _ An interest in paying me to slap him in the face _ . 

“Oh.” Something deflated in Leia. “So it’s like that, huh?”

Rose nodded miserably. She was sixteen years old again, and her mother had figured out how to unlock her datapad and was yelling at her to delete the dating app:  _ “You are better than this, Rose! You’re wasting time you could be using to study on here. If you only applied yourself more, your grades would go up and you could get into Otosni National! Maybe even go off-world to Otomok Station Academy and get yourself a good degree and a job anywhere. But you’re throwing it all away with worthless BOYS. You won’t find a husband this way. Or at least a husband you want. Would any respectable man send nasty things to a girl who didn’t ask him to, of a family he doesn’t know? Well? WOULD HE?” _

In spite of herself, she started to sniffle. Her mother had good points, but even back then she knew that perfect grades and the best score ever on the University entrance exam would be worthless if there was nothing but a smoking crater where the University used to be.

Leia moved beside her and threw an arm over her shoulder. “Here. You are doing just fine. You gave us wonderful intelligence today, and there’s no shame in how you got it. Do you feel safe around this officer?”

“Not really,” Rose choked out. “I’m okay with texting him, though. It’s good to keep him at a distance.”

“You do have more control that way. Now, does he give you more when you...flirt with him?”

“Yes.”

Leia sighed. “You can use that, but be careful. There is no way you can let yourself feel anything but contempt for him. He should not know this, of course. You may think this easy in the beginning, but over time you might find yourself losing sight of your larger goals and developing an attraction.”

“I’ve only ever wanted him dead. I think I can manage that.” He may be easy on the eyes (and possibly fueling her nighttime fantasies of leather gloves caressing her breasts and a shaking body beneath her), but like her mother had cryptically told her years ago, all cats are grey at night.

“Good. Now, there is another thing you must know: he must never, ever gain the upper hand on you. Don’t let him think that you are devoted to him, either. The moment he thinks that he has you, he will take you for granted. Insinuate and demonstrate that you could have any man you wanted in your bed, you are just favoring him as long as he is helping you achieve your goals.”

“Okay,” said Rose. She had taken out her personal datapad and stylus, and had jotted down: “keep control, tell him there are others.”

“I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is no recipe at all for a long, happy marriage. However, it is a good method to coerce a strong-willed man into doing what you want. But should you want a proper relationship, you can look for it later, after the war. I predict you’ll have no trouble with that.”

Rose frowned. “Right. Yeah.” Finn told her that he loved her too. Like a sister. And there was nothing brotherly about the way that he embraced Poe Dameron. They fit so well together and were so stupidly happy going about hand in hand that she couldn’t find it in herself to resent them for it. 

“No, Rose, I’m serious. You have a good head on your shoulders, you’re kind, you’re pretty, and you have your whole life spread out in front of you. Use it well.”

“Uh huh.” Rose had dreams of a glorious future, once. Adventures on a vast planet with rolling seas and craggy mountains hiding cities she’d never seen from her little mining town in the foothills. A handsome, kind man who would fix up old landspeeders with her and laugh at her jokes. Later, he’d give her a couple of children. But the planet she loved was now a slag-heap. All the good men she’d met loved other men. And she knew now that this Galaxy was no place for children.

“Thanks for the advice, General Organa.”

“Just Leia is fine.”

“Oh. Thanks, Leia. How come you know all this?”

Leia gave her a tight, sad smile. “A lifetime of experience.”

  
  
  
  



	5. Pussy

Rose crawled into her narrow, lonely bunk. Between the strategic briefing and her regular maintenance duties, she was beat. The springs of the mattress twanged in protest as she rolled around, trying in vain to get comfortable. 

Her comm beeped. She groaned. She wanted nothing more than to fall asleep tonight. If the stress was keeping her up, maybe she’d rub one out. If she had to. Lately, the frequency of her masturbation sessions was beginning to border on concerning. For a time she’d considered getting a medical opinion on it, but the imaginary scenario of slinking into Dr. Kalonia’s office and telling the motherly lady: “I think I’m too horny now and it’s driving me insane, and the thing that gets me off the quickest is fantasies of biting someone, that didn’t used to turn me on...” was unthinkable. So she suffered in silence. There was no reason she should be attracted to Hux.

“Rosie, sometimes you have to ask yourself if a man is truly attractive or just tall,” Paige told her once as they knocked back cups of black tea that had swirling patinas of grease on the surface of the liquid in an impressive feat of poor hygiene. They were in the cafeteria of their father’s mining rig, pretending to do their homework, but in actuality watching men go by. They should have been at school, or at home. 

But the First Order never bombed the mining rigs, so her father and his colleagues brought their families to work. The glorified giant cans on stilts in the middle of the ocean were noisy and teemed with more bodies than they were ever designed to hold, though there were benefits. Safety from the shelling. Strong young men for Paige and Rose to ogle. 

“There is a difference,” Paige admonished. “A man can be ugly, but if he’s tall enough, you or I would have to bend backwards and look up to see. Don’t be fooled.”

_ He slicks his hair down with shellac or something,  _ Rose reminded herself in the present.  _ That’s not normal. It would probably feel like an insect’s carapace, there’s so much gel in it. You don’t want to touch that. Ever.  _ She turned over and tried not to think about how Hux’s hair would look if he stopped drowning it in pomade.

The comm beeped again. She sighed and picked it up. Whoever it was could wait, she’d tell them so. She needed a kriffing good night’s rest. It was Hux.  _ No. Shut up and let decent folks sleep. _

_ Rose? Can I call you? I’m glad you got that stuff to the right people. There are some other things that you should know, but I’m not willing discuss them in a format that leaves a written record of it. _

_ It’s the middle of the night,  _ she typed back.

_ No it’s not. It’s early in the morning. I can do this before I go on my shift.  _

Oh. So they were in different time zones now.  _ Fine. Call me. _

Her comm gave the telltale ping of an incoming voice call. She hit “accept”. 

“Heeere you are, aren’t you just precious, such a perfect girl for Daddy!”, a syrupy voice crooned on the other end of the line. Rose blinked and it took her a minute to recognize the voice as Hux. “Yes, you are! Daddy’s so lucky he has his little pussy. Well, big pussy, that is, but you’ll always be my baby girl. Mwah!”

Rose cringed and gagged. She did not agree to this. Ever since starting this...arrangement with Hux, she’d done a couple of furtive HoloNet searches for the “Arkanian Vice”. Hux was Arkanian, so he could indulge in it, whatever it was. She’d asked Finn what that was after hearing a couple of pilots talking about it, but he’d stammered out that he didn’t know what it was. He was a terrible liar, so Rose concluded it was some sort of sexual thing.

The HoloNet said that the Arkanian Vice was either a): A propensity for bland, dry food, or b): a tendency to conduct oneself in a boorish manner, especially when away from the homeworld, or, c): a sexual preference for being spanked upon the buttocks with an ironwood rod, often by a young lady wearing an approximation of a traditional Governess uniform. Rose concluded that Hux definitely exemplified the second definition of Arkanian Vice, and that if she had to she’d squeeze into that corset, strap her feet into the heels, nearly strangle herself with the high starched collar and do up all the buttons, swallow her pride, and find a rod somewhere.

Calling Hux “Daddy” was several parasecs past spanking him in a sexy Governess uniform. 

“The only man I ever called ‘Daddy’ was my actual father,” she coldly declared. “I will not dishonor his memory by calling another man that. If you continue in this fashion, we are through.”

There was a gasp. “Wait, you picked up? This was  _ on? _ !”

“Yes. You called  _ me.” _

“No, I didn’t…” There was a rustling of objects on the other line, and then: “Millie, you naughty girl. Daddy is working.”

“Who is Millie?” Did Hux have a wife? One who would do really kriffed up sex or roleplay things with him? Was Millie safe? She couldn’t imagine anyone marrying General Hux of their own free will. And now, she could be helping him cheat on this poor woman.

“Millie is my pussy,” Hux said. “She’s been with me since she was little.”

Rose’s mouth went dry. “You are a sick, evil man!”

“What?”

“You took a child bride! Or mistress, or something!”

“No, I am not married! Where the kriffing Sith Hell are you getting that ridiculous idea from?”

“You don’t even call her your wife. You call her your pussy. That’s all she is, an object to you. I’d expect as much from someone who asked me for naughty pictures.”

“Rose, what do you think pussy means?”

“Vagina. Cunt. Why do you ask?”

There was a sound of choking. “Rose, pussy is a word for a cat. Millie is my cat. My actual cat. I can assure you that I look after her properly. Whyever would someone call a vagina a pussy? That’s just wrong! Disgusting. Now that word is forever tainted for me. Is that some filthy Resistance thing? Here, I’ll turn on video so you can see her.”

There was a rustling, and something that sounded like an indignant “Mrrt”. Hux was sitting at a desk with a backdrop of plain black wall, and a lap full of ginger...monstrosity. It had six legs ending in clawed feet, four evil yellow eyes, and a swishing tail that was simultaneously fluffy and spiked. The thing yawned, exposing a pink, curled tongue and two rows of serrated green teeth. It had little tufts of ginger fur where its ears should have been.

“What is that thing?”

“I told you, a cat. Did you not have them on Hays Minor?”

“We did, but they didn’t look like that! Kriff, it looks dangerous.”

“It? Her name is Millicent. She’s picky about her people, but she’s an old softie at heart. I call her my little girl, but she’s twenty years old or so and her kind can live till forty, so she’s actually a middle-aged lady.” He stuck his gloved hand under where the thing’s chin should have been and rubbed. There was a roar like an engine, and the Millicent creature leaned into his touch. Perhaps it was a cat after all. 

Maybe Hux kept a vicious wild animal as a pet, but at least he didn’t have a Daddy Kink. She could work with that. 

“Do you want me to send her some of Millie’s baby pictures?”, Hux asked, seemingly oblivious to her terror. Or was he enjoying it? “She looked very sweet then. Of course, she nearly took off my thumb back then, so looks can be deceiving. Can’t say as I blame her. She didn’t have a good entrance into this Galaxy. Some complete piece of scum caught her in a trap and tried to shoot her with a blaster. I soon put a stop to that.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Rose muttered. “Shouldn’t she be out in...the wild or something? I can’t imagine she’s adapted to life on a ship.”

“She’d get ripped to pieces back home,” Hux told her. “Arkanian cats are scavengers. They’re nothing compared to foxes and wolves. A fox would eat Millicent up for tea and still be hungry.” As Millicent draped over Hux’s lap and made this great big scarecrow of a man seem smaller, Rose decided she did NOT want to know how large the “foxes” on Arkanis could get.

“She’s been with me for the past twenty years, or thereabouts. I was able to take her because on Arkanis, it’s bad luck to sail on a ship without a cat. Same principle on Star Destroyers. She eats up the vermin and supports morale.”

Rose doubted the morale value of this creature. Her datapad pinged. “The baby pictures are there,” he said. Rose looked. 

There was the same creature, but so small she could fit into that silly little officer’s hat. She was curled up in the hat, then perched on a Mouse droid, cradled in the arms of a much younger Hux...Hux looked softer then. Happier, his face unlined with the weight of oppressing the known Galaxy. Millicent’s four eyes were bigger, and her paws stuck out on her legs like pancakes on sticks. 

“She was kind of cute when she was small,” Rose conceded. “Still a vicious killing machine, though.” These statements could also easily apply to the other ginger in the room. “So, what do you have to tell me that’s so important you’re scared of having our conversation intercepted? And why are you talking to me and not going straight to General Organa?”

Hux steepled his fingers. “You are an engineer. A damned good one too, unfortunately. As soon as I learned your name, I found out everything I could about you. I must extend my congratulations for your work on those cloaking pods. Nothing we have works against them. Not even the best decoding officer or systems interfacer in my employ can figure them out. So you will understand what I have to tell you. Plans can be intercepted, and were I to talk to someone without your background it would just go in one ear and out the other.”

Rose smirked. “You admit I have a brain, and that you’re just not using me for my body?”

Hux fidgeted and gazed down at Millicent. “Your admirable aggression and good looks were a bonus, I will admit. Now, can we talk business?”

  
  



	6. A Hard Night's Work

“What technical secrets of the First Order are you giving away today?”, Rose asked. It sounded brash, but she was asking for information, not trying to seduce him. Well, maybe it should be both. Could be both. She was not attracted to him, would never be attracted to him. But some cruel undercurrent in herself was pleased by the idea of a man who once called her vermin desiring her and wishing to give her pleasure. She was no honeypot. Oh well. “Is it that the modeling consoles act up unless you stick googly eyes on them and leave them offerings of candy?” At least she knew how to be flippant. 

Hux scowled. “No. And given your work with the cloaking pods, I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out already.”

Rose bit her lip and tried to think. Hmm. The cloaking pods worked by exploiting the First Order’s penchant for building heat-seeking and sonographic scanners to detect life forms. Though an escape pod might well be invisible three miles away from a dreadnought, the scanning devices could find any sizable life form inhabiting a pod or ship within one orbital by analyzing the heat signatures and sound waves emanating from the object. They were brutally accurate. 

Rose’s solution was to install speakers on each escape pod which broadcast white noise; the random signals of equal intensity confounded all efforts to count bodies. The gravitational waves between ships allowed sound to carry farther than anyone expected, and the First Order’s engineers were some of the first to exploit this relatively new discovery. Not anymore.

The pods were also covered with specialized heat-reflective durasteel, which actually helped with insulation. It was expensive, but at least this extravagance meant fewer pods and smaller crafts would be shot down, and fewer bodies would spiral out from their wreckage, suffocating and freezing in the void of Space. 

The First Order could also detect comms signals, so she’d developed a comms application that generated random signals mimicking those of any commercial broadcast satellite.Hiding communications in the noise of a hardworking satellite ensuring that the latest episodes of  _ Desperate Househusbands of Naboo  _ could be viewed by the bored as far afield as Tatooine seemed effective so far. She’d heard that the Order had shot down a broadcast satellite by mistake, and this sparked an outcry on the nearby rural planet that had cooperated with them  _ until that point.  _ Guess some people really love their soaps. Or the idea of free communication with anyone in the Galaxy. And the fear that this military collective that insisted they were not interfering had broken their promise and left them uninformed and alone. 

She thought more about what Hux told her. “Is it that those fancy scanners are garbage? Because that is not news. Not to me.”

Hux sighed. “And here I thought you were clever.” He moved one gloved hand to pet his cat-thing.

Rose glared at him. Millicent gave a low growl and tolerated this indignity briefly, then hopped off Hux’s lap and curled up on the floor, licking her butt. “Those cloaking pods have multiple distinct components. That I’m not telling you about. I think you’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“Pity I’ll never hear how you managed to hide all escape pods and small crafts from our detection devices,” he said. “But I understand that one must have trade secrets. Yes, our scanners could be much improved. As of now, they are either much too sensitive and register every asteroid we encounter as an enemy ship, or they pick up nothing. That is a problem for the Engineering department to solve. Alas, they are underfunded as our resident childish Force-user breaks everything in his path and most of our budget goes to repairs. So we can only develop inadequate scanners. But why does anyone need scanners at all?”

“To detect lifeforms?”

“You’re thinking like a civvy. Or a scientist. Try again.”

“What’s a civvy?”

Hux rolled his eyes. “Civilian. I forget that not everyone has a command of Imperial Basic, of course.”

“At least I’ve never called my pet a synonym for ‘cunt’!”

Hux blushed. “Or, from a certain point of view, the rest of the Galaxy has perverted a completely innocent word. But we are wasting our time. What is a scanner for? Why would they be on a dreadnought?”

Rose frowned and thought again. Not for detecting lifeforms. For detecting enemy ships? For feeding data into the targeting system of ventral cannons?

“Are you trying to tell me,” Rose slowly began, “that your cannon targeting systems rely on scanner input? And if that is compromised, so will be your ability to open fire?”

Hux nodded. “The older ships are even buggier. That’s most of the Exegol fleet. I have often wondered why you lot didn’t outfit all of your vessels with the cloaking technology. That would give you a competitive advantage in battle.”

General Organa and others had asked her this very question before. “Because it’s kriffing expensive, that’s why!”, she exclaimed. It was. The reflective durasteel, the speakers, and the comm extensions all cost credits that were rapidly draining away. 

“Ah. But why have you concentrated those resources on making your little shuttles and escape pods invisible? Why not hide an entire Dreadnought?”

“Escape pods have no real means of propulsion or defense. Our people are sitting nerfs in there. Same for most of the little shuttles. My work has saved hundreds of lives.” If they opened fire with a cloaked ship, they’d announce their presence anyway. The First Order ships could triangulate and figure out their position based on the shots fired. Well. Maybe they couldn’t, based on this new information. Rose was unsure how to feel about that. It was dishonorable to attack someone while they couldn’t see you.  _ The First Order never cared about honor.  _

Hux smiled unpleasantly. “This is why you’re an Engineer, not a General. You should have hidden an entire battleship. Then gone and carried out a series of attacks before any of us were the wiser. Now, we know you’ve done  _ something  _ to the escape pods, though we don’t know exactly what. With a proper R and D budget, in a couple of years, we might figure it out.”

“I don’t care. I never want to be a General.”

Hux shook his head. “Nothing’s ever about what we want. Upper ranks of the Resistance are looking a little thin, I hear, since we shot so many of your people down and that Vice Admiral threw herself at us. Some are born to command, some achieve command, and others have command thrust upon them.” 

“Which are you?”

“Pardon?”

“Were you born to it, did you get it, or was it done to you?”

“I achieved it. Despite those who said it was only because I was born to it.”

Rose frowned. “Wasn’t your father some big shot in the First Order too?”

“Yes, but he never lifted a finger for me.” Hux’s jaw clenched and she thought she could see a little vein jumping beneath his too-pasty skin. If he spent any time beneath a sun, he’d have freckles everywhere. She tried not to think about how he’d look with them. Best change the subject. Rose missed her father. But it was clear that Hux didn’t miss his.

“So you’re saying that we can kark up your cannon targeting systems. Are you going to tell me how?”

“And take the fun out of it for you?” Hux scoffed. “You do tech, I do management. I think it shall be on a similar principle to your cloaking pods. Besides, I got you everything I knew about Exegol. I imagine you lot can make something of that.”

Rose’s mouth flopped open. “Exegol is a WHOLE PLANET OF SITH CULTISTS. That we didn’t know about until now. We’ve not the forces to properly attack it. We’re all in shock, frankly.”

“You’d be more in shock if you didn’t know until too late.”

“True. But I’m not  _ happy  _ about it. And I have to tell you one thing: this doesn’t change anything.”

“What do you mean?” 

“This doesn’t bring back Hays Minor. It doesn’t bring back the Hosnian System.”

Hux leaned forward. “Oh, I  _ know.  _ And I don’t wish I could bring them back. It wouldn’t make Kylo Ren and High Command properly kriffed off. Not in the way that getting taken down by a disorderly rabble can.”

She felt a rage swelling up, but her eyelids were heavy and her throat was dry from talking too much. She yawned. “Well, this particular disorderly rabble wants to get some sleep. She worked and was in meetings all day.”

“What time is it where you are?” If she gave him a time zone, he could surmise where they were located. Nope.

“Time for me to go to bed. Goodnight. Good morning. Good whatever. She moved to cut the call.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

“If you send me a picture, I’ll send you more stuff.”

“I’ll have to get you something tomorrow. I look a mess right now.” Her hair flowed out behind her head and tangled, she had puffy eyes from lack of sleep, and she’d not taken a sonic in ages.

“You don’t. Sooner is better.”

Rose sighed. Fine. “Okay, what do you want? Nothing too lewd, of course.”

Hux swallowed hard. “Just a picture of yourself, as you are now. No need to do anything else.”

“I can send you that, I’ll snap a pic right after I get off this call. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” He cut the call.

Rose flicked on the light beside her bunk, opened the camera function, and played with the angles until it didn’t look too much like a selfie. She cringed. Rose wore what she normally wore to bed; a pair of short black shorts, a rumpled orange tanktop. She hadn’t shaved her legs in weeks, there was no time. Oof. She threw the blanket over her shins to hide the well-established secondary forest of hair and propped herself up on pillows. There. Not so bad. She was clearly in a bed, but she was fully dressed. Saucy, not smutty. Why did Hux want to see  _ this?  _ She put her comm away and went to sleep. 

Though she fell asleep, she soon fell into an uncomfortable dream.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know there are no sound waves in space. But the SW universe has space wizards, space battles with sound, ghosts, people surviving the vacuum of space, and telekinesis. I figured sound carrying in space is not that much of a stretch because the usual laws of physics don't apply.
> 
> About the background pairings: there's background stormpilot and background Rey/Kaydel. This fic is still a Gingerrose fic. These pairings are mostly there so Finn, Rey, Kaydel, and Poe can hear more details about Rose and Hux and go "Force, why are straight people so weird?!", and Rose goes "no that's mostly Hux, not me, also for all I know he could be bi."  
> "Rose, we love you, but what even is your life now?"  
> "I don't kriffing know. At least he's only pestering me for 'barehand pics', not nudes, and I get intel for it."


	7. Bones in the Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up: this chapter is a good deal more explicit and angstier than previous chapters. I haven't changed the rating, though, because I think that the E-rating is more for PWPs and fics with the level of gore you'd find in a Tarantino film. This will have some porny bits but it's going to be like 80-90% plot and people talking.
> 
> Also, though this is angst, there will be more humor! Next chapter is Rose having breakfast with the Resistance Peanut Gallery.

Rose sat at the kitchen table in her family’s unit on the mining rig. Its cracked plasteel surface was covered in Calculus notes. She had an examination that she had not studied for in three hours. Her heart beat against her ribs like an enraged Beacon-bug trapped in a jar. Gripping the pencil tightly, she stared down the practice question:  _ If molten Haysian Smelt flows into an intake pipe at a rate of 18 sin ((t^2)/23) cubic feet per hour, t is given in hours, and t is between 0 and 8 hours inclusive, and outflow from this pipe is given by -0.24 (t^3) +6.3 (t^2) + 0.61 t and the pipe is blocked by the mass of 2 happabores, what is the volume of smelt during the 8-hour interval of 0 to 8 hours? _

Ugh, she almost knew this one. But why didn’t they give a pre-existing volume to already be in the pipe? Stupid National Exams. They didn’t measure academic skill so much as resistance to trickery. Fine, she’d go down the page. This was a practice question, it was designed to be harder than the real thing. This was okay.  _ B. If 23 (twenty-three) human souls are sacrificed to this operation, how will this change the direction of the flow?  _ How was she supposed to know? They’d never discussed metaphysics in math class.

The door behind her creaked open, and her father stepped out. “What have you got there, Rosie?” His jaws were coated with salt-and-pepper stubble. After maybe five hours of sleep, he was going back to work again. Not safe working practice, but nothing was safe these days.

“I’m trying to study,” Rose moaned. “None of this makes sense. I have a test in class today and I’m gonna fail. I’ll flunk this class and flunk National Exams. I’ll have to become a fisherman or a trophy wife because I won’t get a place in uni. And if the sea runs out of fish and nobody will marry me, I’ll starve.” She frowned. Wait, she was living on the mining rig with her family, but she still had school and exams? Didn’t the school get bombed? There was a smoking crater and little pieces of consoles and flimsi like something out of a bad war holodrama, only it was real. Never mind that, she still had that exam. 

Her father chuckled. “You won’t  _ fail,  _ Rose. Your definition of ‘failing’ is getting an 8 out of 10.”

“But this is so hard! How was I supposed to know I needed to memorize the mass of a happabore or the worth of a soul?”

“The  _ what?”  _ He frowned. “I don’t think that’s standard Calculus. Mind if I take a look?”

“Don’t you have work?”

“They can wait ten minutes. Maybe I can’t sleep anymore, but at least I can look over your homework.” Hue Tico leaned over his daughter’s shoulder and read the question and her scribblings. 

They were silent together for a while. “Kriff, they’ve changed it since I was in school,” he muttered. “They should have told you that in this case the souls would be 91 cubic meters altogether. Not sure about the happabores, though.”

Rose ground her teeth.

“That looks like the hardest practice problem out there, Rosie. I’d just look over your formulas sheet and old homework, then go in. You’ll be fine. I need to go now. Tell Paige and your mother not to wait up for me.” 

She rose from her chair and got on her tiptoes to hug him tightly, head on his shoulder. “Okay. Come back.”

“I will. I always will.” He picked up his pack and went out the door.

_ Liar.  _ One day, he wouldn’t. One day...one day Rose would feel true hatred for the first time. How did she know this? Her father, Hue Tico was alive and well enough right in front of her. And she needed to study. The printed equations swam before her eyes.

The alarm on her datapad sounded. Kark this, she needed to make breakfast for her mother and Paige. She got up from the table and went over to a covered bowl on the counter. Taking the wooden spoon beside it, she lifted up the cover and began to whip the watery grains, the  _ poina.  _ They had sat overnight, and the quick fermentation with wild yeast had softened the outer shells of the grain. She’d boil it into a porridge and add some dried fish and purplegrass if they had it. If they didn’t, they’d just have to eat it as it was. Poina was traditionally a meal for peasants. She supposed that under First Order control, they were now no better than serfs.

“What is that  _ thing?”,  _ someone sneered behind her. She turned, wooden spoon in hand. General Hux.

“Food,” she replied. “And you’re not getting any because you didn’t help me make it.” She turned on the burner, strained the excess water into a bucket (the drain clogged last week), and dumped the poina into a pan. She rummaged around the cabinet and found the jar of dried fish. Good. Breakfast would be bearable today. She twisted the top off, and cried out.

“What?” Hux was leaning against the wall. Couldn’t he leave?

Wordlessly, she passed the jar over to him. It was full of screws. 

“I see no problem here.”

“It was  _ supposed  _ to have dried fish in it.”

“I despise fish.”

“Good for you. I happen to like it, and I was going to have some for our breakfast. Now, unless you’re going to do the washing-up for me, LEAVE. This place is not yours.”

Hux smirked. “Aren’t you going to fuck me?”

“WHAT?”

“If you fuck me, I’ll stop you all from getting blown up next week. What do you say to that?”

Rose blinked. “I have a Calculus exam today. I’m going to fail it. Next week is not my problem.”

“Fine, I’ll help you study Calculus before you fuck me. I got top grades in it when I took the class, and you can too with a bit of extra work. If you fuck me. Then I’ll help you lot move out of here to safety.”

She looked up at his pinched features, greasy hair, and stupid greatcoat with the shoulder patch that looked like a red and black butthole. “Deal. But on my terms. I’m going to tell you what to do and be on top.”

“Perfection.”

“If you get rough and start doing stuff without asking me, I’ll...I’ll...she glanced around. Nobody was here to hear her scream. “I’ll smack you across your pretty face with this wooden spoon.”

“You don’t charge extra for that?”

“No.”

Just then, the door from the sleeping quarters banged open. There was her mother, peering at Hux, lips pressed tightly together and fingers worrying at the sleeve of her nightshirt. “Rosie, who is this?”

“Um, this guy from...school. He’s helping me with Calculus. We’re gonna go to the library and study together before class.” 

“Oh. That’s alright then. Have fun!”

Thanya Tico waved to them as Hux took Rose’s hand and they left the room.

“Where are we going?”, Hux asked.

“Locker rooms by our school swimming pool. I’m not going to fuck you in the rooms I share with my family.”

Force, he was so tall. She couldn’t wait to climb him, to make that pasty flesh red.And make him shut up. Maybe that fierce tongue would be put to better use between her legs.

They came to a nondescript door. “Here.” Inside was a grey room with a dripping ceiling, the only furniture splintery old benches and wire cages for clothes and belongings. An area of open duracrete floor stretched out to the side. But in a cubby, there was a pile of electric-blue mats. Normally they used those for the Girl’s strength training exercises. Rose joined the school swim team to  _ swim,  _ not contort her body into positions that should have been banned by interplanetary convention as torture while wearing nothing but a swimsuit that hugged her newly-emerged curves, pinching and exposing her bottom. 

For once, Rose was going to enjoy the time she spent in this room. She’d have to do “dryland” exercises later, in here, but she would have the memories to keep her company while her muscles screamed and she had to look at her body, which didn’t fit quite right yet...wait, she wasn’t a teenager anymore, she’d gained breasts and muscle. When did that happen? Did she still have to take the Calculus exam?

She pulled out a mat and set it out on the damp floor. “Strip. I want to watch you.” Hux folded his greatcoat and placed it on a bench. The hat followed. Off came the tunic, the set of dog tags. He was narrow and pale like a noodle. A noodle with tiny pink nipples. The muscles he  _ did  _ have were surprisingly well-defined. Freckles dusted his shoulders like stars. She moved closer to inspect him. Down came his trousers, bunching at the ankles. He sat down on the bench, yanked at the boots and frowned. 

“What?”

“Normally I have a bootjack to take these off. I’ll need help. Come here.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “I thought you got off on  _ me  _ telling  _ you  _ what to do.”

“And I’m telling you that if you want these off within the hour you need to help me.”

Rose grabbed the heel of his boot and pulled down, grunting a little. “How do you cope with wearing these all day?”

“I have a bootjack. You’re doing this wrong, by the way.”

“Oh? How do I take off your stupid boots that don’t even have proper laces?”

Hux smiled. “Face away from me.”

Rose turned. 

“Good. Now, for the best leverage and angle, straddle my leg. Grab the heel and pull  _ down,  _ not up.”

Blushing, she complied. The boot popped right off. His thigh was shockingly warm. Someone as cruel as he was should have been freezing all the way through. She stumbled, and the improbably taut surface of his thigh brushed between her legs. She frantically hopped over his other leg and yanked off the second boot. It was easier than the first try. 

Now Hux pulled off and folded his socks. Further proof that he wasn’t human. The pants were soon gone, then his briefs followed. Rose gazed down on him. She gulped. 

Hux’s cock looked exactly like one she’d seen in a porno she watched before bed a couple weeks ago in a moment of weakness; on the larger size but not painfully so, red curls neatly trimmed. It was red and rapidly hardening.

“Now what?”, he asked. “Are you going to undress?”

Rose backhanded him across the face. His pale skin showed the outline of her hand. He grinned. “This is very nice, but I was expecting something a little more...intimate.”

Rose slapped him again and moved her hand to his neck. “Shut up and lie down on the mat.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Better.”

He complied. Suddenly, she noticed he wasn’t completely naked; he still wore those black leather gloves. “Aren’t you going to take off the gloves?”

“I thought you liked them.”

“I do.”

She knelt over him. 

“How are you going to fuck me fully clothed?”

“I’m getting there.” She blinked, and she was naked. Rose turned around and looked for her clothes, but they were gone. Even her necklace. “Hey! Where’d my clothes go?”

“Why is that important?”

“I only have so many outfits. And my necklace was in there.” Barefoot and vulnerable to every sort of wart that grew in here, she fruitlessly searched the locker room. Sighing, she returned to Hux, who had stretched out on the mildewy foam mat like it was a soft featherbed in a luxury hotel on Canto Bight. She straddled him, closed her eyes, and sank down on his hard length. Well, where his hard length should have been. Though she squirmed against him, she did not feel the typical stretch and burn of penetration. “After this you’ll call off the bombing.”

“Yes. Oh, yes, you beautiful slut!”

Rose slapped him and moved the palm of her hand over his throat and pushed down. “Don’t call me that. You’re here because you wanted someone to put you in your place, you sick kriffer. Can you behave?”

“Yes,” he wheezed. She moved her hand. But no sooner did she let go of his neck than he rolled and had her pinned to the floor. Rose looked up at his green eyes, pupils so fully blown that they were nearly black. He moved, and she cried out in rage, helpless to do nothing but wrap her arms around his back and push against him. She raked her nails against the creamy flesh of his back. Soon she felt a gush of hot blood. He hissed and arched his back, driving into her harder...wait, he actually wasn’t, this didn’t feel like  _ anything,  _ really. She surged forward and bit him, right at the intersection of shoulder and neck, still carving inscriptions of her rage into his back.

He shook but kept up his brutal pace. She twisted under him and snaked a hand between them, trying to pinch a nipple. He caught her wrist. One gloved hand slid up her breasts, over her collarbone, resting on her neck. Rose shook her head, then writhed beneath him until she had a good angle. Then, she bit his hand hard. 

“Knew you still had it,” he panted, gloating. Rose took this opportunity to flip him over while he was distracted. Now she rode him, and he let out a volley of little cries for her. 

“I’m going--to--tell--you a, a, story,” she gasped. “So, back on Hays Minor there was this...thing.”

“Sounds like a boring story, if nobody ever knew what the thing was.”

“Shut up! I’m distracted here. And I have to take my Calculus exam. Kriff, I left the poina on the stove, that’s gonna burn…”

“You came here to fuck me. If you must, tell me a,  _ oh pfassk, right there,  _ tell me a story.” Sweat shimmered on his brow, and his hair hung free from the gel. 

“Anyway, the thing. I heard she was born in the sea, others say her lover tied her up with weights and threw her in to drown. The details vary from province to province, I guess. She had different names depending on the region, but we always called her the, the Lonely Walker, you would say in Basic. She was sometimes a woman, sometimes a little girl depending on who was telling it. So the…” 

Hux moaned in agony or ecstasy, she wasn’t sure which. “Shh, I’m trying to tell a story. The Lonely Walker only ever appeared at night. On roads that most landspeeders didn’t drive. Usually back roads that nobody used anymore. Sometimes she was missing an eye. Sometimes she walked with a limp. Sometimes she was bent over from crying. More often than not, she would walk a lonely road by the sea. Abandoned tracks toward the ports or mining rigs were a favorite of hers. But the thing about the Walker was that she was always seen coming  _ from  _ the old tracks, towards the main road. So if someone was driving along, the good thing to do would be to offer her a lift.”

“And then she murdered the would-be gallant ore trucker or some such thing,” Hux said, altogether too drily for someone in the middle of sex.

“No. I’m getting to that. So some people offered her a lift. Some folks would say things like ‘Where do you need to go, sister? Chances are I’m going the same way, don’t you worry, I know times are hard, you don’t need to do anything at all…’, and those people were the only ones who picked up the Walker and lived to tell the tale. She’d name an address or a road, and it would always be an abandoned house in a copse of trees by the highway, or a vacant lot, or a bridge. The man who gave her a ride would try to ask her if she was sure this was the right place, it looked bad didn’t it, but before she could answer the Walker would disappear.”

“Ah. So she’s a ghost.”

Rose sunk further onto him and grabbed his wrists. “Not really. Ghosts are just memories of people. The Walker was more substantial than that. Sometimes she’d offer the trucker a little something in return for the ride. The truckers who say no live. The ones who take her up on it, well…”

“What happened to them?”

Rose gave a predator’s grin. “One truck was found in the bay, driven off the guardrails. They found his body, and a woman’s dress in a style twenty years out of fashion. Another time, one fellow tried to take what he thought he was owed, he shoved it in, and she bit it off, then ate the rest of him and left the head on the beach. She had a second mouth, as it were. Sometimes she sits in forests or on cliffs by the ocean, always weak and alone.”

“Ooh, spooky.” Hux stilled beneath her. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You took me up on my offer. You saw me in distress, and you gave me help, for a price. That’s dangerous.”

“I can give you my med test results. I’m clean.”

“No, it’s not that. Dangerous for you.”

“How?”

The foam mat and slimy floor fell away. They were in the ocean, the merciless, frigid Northern Masano Sea. Distant sunlight flickered above them, and bubbles burst around their twisted bodies. Rose was fucking harder into him, grasping at the one solid thing left. Silver eels danced through the water. 

“What did you  _ do?”  _ Somehow sound worked in this place.

“I don’t know!” White things floated around them. Her Calculus notes. They would be soaked. 

“Thank the stars we managed to blow this miserable rock of a planet to bits.”

“Shut up!” Rose bit him again, this time over his windpipe. Her teeth had grown sharper; a cloud of blood burst from his neck. She raked her nails down his chest, down his incongruous abs, leaving red stripes. She grabbed his cock and gave it a twist. He groaned.

She bit him in a frenzy, each bite painting the water with red. She clamped both hands around his throat, squeezing as hard as she could. Her fingers were numb. She looked at them. Her skin was grey and wrinkled, her nails now black claws. She unclenched a hand, and two fingers fell off, spiraling away on the currents. A sob escaped her.

“Rose!” This was Paige’s voice, so she turned her head.

There was Paige, in her pilot’s uniform. She smiled, but half of her torso was burned away. “Oh Rose, I’ve missed you so. But why are you fucking this loser? Did you meet him on the Holonet dating app?”

“Please don’t watch,” Rose whispered. “You’re my sister. You’re dead.”

Paige let out a chuckle, expelling more blood and bubbles. “I was supposed to look after you. Ma told me so. I didn’t do a very good job, sorry.”

“I missed you. But I had to do this, Paige.” She let go of Hux’s neck. His body floated listlessly. “He’s dead.” He began to sink to the depths, his red hair flowing out like the banner of a defeated army. His corpse trailed blood that swirled from the wounds like smoke from a snuffed candle.

“Good,” Paige said. “He destroyed our home and blew up the Hosnian system, he should die.”

Another stiff shape floated into view. Rose’s father. Still in his work uniform of overalls and boots, a hole burned into his chest where he’d been shot. After nearly two years of successful sabotage work, the First Order discovered what he’d done. Paige floated over to him and threw an arm over his shoulder. “Ba, wake up!”, Paige chirped. “Rose is here!” He didn’t wake up. His face was still dead. The pages of Rose’s math worksheets sank down around in rectangular snowflakes. Rose caught one, losing two more fingers on her right hand in the process. It was covered in dreadnought schematics instead of Calculus. She’d catch hell from Mrs. Park when she had to turn it in. But these were important, somehow. She had to get this piece of paper to General Organa, to Leia!

“I have to go,” she told Paige and the corpse of her father. She didn’t say anything to the sinking form of General Hux, his lanky body already under investigation by a school of hungry Vulture-fish, their long black fins swishing excitedly.

Kicking and flailing, she tried to swim upwards. But ice-cold water filled her nostrils, her throat, her lungs. She was the fastest swimmer in her county’s school, beating girls from four villages. But speed meant nothing in the Masano, her father had told her once. The cold froze her muscles and paralyzed her. Stupid young First Order officers who thought they’d take a dip in the summer drowned less than twenty meters from the shore. This sea cooled them off better than they ever expected or wanted. Now, in her own folly she’d join them. 

_ I failed,  _ she thought as she struggled to breathe and everything went black. There was a beeping noise. A timer? No, her alarm! She rolled over and pulled her pillow off her face. One slap to her comm, and she sat up in bed. 

She’d killed Hux and died. No, that was a dream. That meant that she hadn’t gotten fucked either. Her cunt was hard with want, dripping down into her panties. She’d need to do laundry today. She shoved a hand down, and found folds as stiff as paper, and a rock-hard clit. If she didn’t get any stimulation there, she’d scream. Okay, she could rub one out before taking a sonic and going to work. 

Clenching her teeth, she tossed her shorts and panties onto the floor and rubbed her cunt furiously with a couple of fingers. The images of her sister and her father’s corpses kept coming back. Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. She shouldn’t be doing this now, but she was so horny her whole body ached.  _ Sorry.  _ She arched her back and whimpered as she came, imagining General Hux writhing beneath him at her mercy. 

There was a knock at her door. 

“I’m not decent!”, she bellowed. This was true in so many ways.


	8. Shower Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heeheehee I changed the rating to more accurately reflect recent chapters and where I think this will go!  
> But any smut will be in keeping with the tone of this fic; it will be more humorous than erotic. So Rose & Hux will have sex, but it may not necessarily be good sex (it's all fairly consensual though; I tagged the fic as mild dubcon to reflect Rose's finger-biting scene and the fact that she's mostly doing it for favors at the beginning).

“Sorry”, called Rey. “I’ll come back when you get dressed. I want to talk, whenever you’re ready.” Tension hid in her voice.

“I’m gonna take a sonic, it might be awhile. Ask me now.” She shucked off her sweaty tanktop and wrapped a towel around herself, slipped her feet into the uncomfortable rubber sandals, and hobbled out into the hallway.

Rey pressed herself apologetically against the corridor wall and stared at the floor. “You can actually get water today. We managed to improve our moisture-recycling system. I rerouted the main condenser.”

_ That should have been my job,  _ Rose thought.  _ But I was too busy texting one ginger kriff-boy and beating off. _

“Nice,” she said. “Showers take longer, though. Think I’ll pass, save it for some flyboy who just came off a 24-hour haul.”

Rey shifted from one foot to another. “You have time. Leia told me to tell you that you’re stood down for the day. Her exact words were: ‘Make sure she relaxes; if you leave her to her own devices she’s going to try to fix something or even start cleaning.’”

“ _ Try  _ to fix something?” Rose scoffed. “I normally just fix things, no trying involved.”

“Except for the fizzy drink dispenser,” Rey said with a smile. “You tried a lot.”

“And then it turned out I was wrong and we needed the Force to stem the tide of carbonated liquid,” Rose said. “Don’t remind me. But usually, my point stands. Alright. No attempted appliance repairs today, General’s Orders. I can take a shower with real soap and water, then meet up with you.”

“I can shower too,” said Rey too quickly. “In a different stall, I mean. Unless that’s weird. Is it weird to talk to someone while you shower in adjacent stalls? It’s efficient, but lots of people around here seem to have a thing about nudity and stuff. On Jakku we’d just strip in a rainstorm and not worry about that.”

“No,” said Rose. “Nothing’s really weird unless you go and make it that way. We can talk in the shower.”

They passed by Rey’s room so she could grab a towel and a change of clothes. Rey untied her three buns. “This is going to be great,” she exclaimed. “Hot water, and a little scented cake or some nutrient gel to eat while we get clean!”

“That’s soap and shower gel!”

Rey spat out a chunk of jogan-fruit scented soap bar. “Ugh. Why do people make it smell edible?”

“Some people like to smell like jogan-fruit. Wait, you’ve really never seen soap before?”

“I know what soap is! It’s made out of happabore tallow and smells bad, but it takes the grime off. And all I’ve had so far shipside were sonics. Those are easy; just strip off and get clean.”

“Yeah, but hot water feels so much better.” Rose pumped shower gel into her hands from the communal dispenser, stepped into the cubicle so short it only came up to her breasts, hung up the towel, and turned on the water. The shower facilities were primitive here; normally they never had much water to waste on such things. Well, not really waste. She was showering in treated wastewater that was heated by their engines. And once the artificial gravity sucked it down the drain, it would be reused. Most people used the sonics, so this row of stalls was an afterthought. Best not to think about the “wastewater” aspect of it; Rose had seen the treatment system and knew it was sanitary.

Her skin received the shower’s spray like a blessing. She sighed happily as she coated herself with lather, closing her eyes. It was almost too easy to pretend she was back home on Hays Minor, a planet mostly ocean. The little patches of land were dotted with lakes. She took a shower every day. She thought her family was poor back then. Perhaps they didn’t have many credits, but the free-flowing water that surrounded them was a symbol of opulence in space.

“You were having a bad dream last night.”

The voice from the next cubicle jolted her out of her reverie. It was a statement, not a question. Rose’s cheeks flushed bright in a way that had nothing to do with the shower’s steam.

“Perhaps I was. I don’t really remember it. How would you know?”

Rey squeezed out her hair. “You were loud.”

_ Gods of my ancestors and the sea, kill me now.  _ “Oh, kriff. Did I wake people up?”

“No, I didn’t explain that right. Your emotions were so big and loud that they were seeping out of the room and into my head, if that makes any sense. They were so distracting I couldn’t sleep.”

_ Rey shared my sex dream. Rey. Knows. My. Kinks. Nonononono. This did not happen. It’s another nightmare; I’ll blink and wake up in my bed unsatisfied again. _

“S-sorry,” Rose said. “What did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything, that’s not how the Force works. Well, not usually. I can have visions, but those could be hallucinations or my mind playing tricks on me. But they’re not usually of or about other people. What happens with other people’s emotions is that I feel them, without much context. For example, I, um, shared in your lust, anger, and fear last night.”

Now Rey was blushing and looking away. “It usually only happens when I’m tired and my impulse control is down, and the person whose emotions I feel is a close friend.”

Rose gulped, gently setting a reply on the tip of her tongue:  _ I’m sorry Rey. I only like men. Unfortunately. I wish I could like women because you are a lovely person and the selection of suitable women around here is better than the men. You’ll find someone. _

Rey grimaced. “No, Rose, it’s not that. I’m worried about you! You were so frightened. They say dreams are the subconscious reflection on our fears and desires. So what happened to you? What do you want that you aren’t getting?”

_ Wait, she can hear my thoughts? _

“Yes. Sorry. When I started meditating more, I became more aware of other people’s thoughts and emotions. I try to turn it off because it makes me feel creepy. But I can only really get the thoughts if I concentrate on them; if I’m just around you it’s more emotion than coherent ideas.”

“Ahh.” Rose made a show of casting about for her razor. Normally, she didn’t bother to shave. But she didn’t want to be put to the trouble of editing out the hairs on her legs when she took foot pictures for Hux. Wait, she could get a stock photo of some random person’s feet and send it to him instead! She wouldn’t have to indulge his weird kinks, but she’d get the intel anyway.  _ The skin tones would have to match, though. And he isn’t lusting over some anonymous camgirl, he’s horny for ME.  _ That thought sent arousal coursing through her and twisted her stomach at the same time.

One night long ago, Rose thought she’d lose her virginity to a boy she thought she loved. But he’d gotten one good look at her soft belly that kept her warm in the swimming pool beneath her burgeoning breasts, at her unshaven cunt, at her legs downy with little hairs, and stammered something about waiting until marriage. He never spoke to her again. A week later, she watched him getting handsy with one of the girls who had nutrient shakes instead of food for lunch.

Rose moved on. She didn’t become a thirty-year-old virgin like she feared she would, but she knew how men saw her: “cute”, “sweet:, “nice”, “wholesome”, “wonderful personality”. “Sexy” did not feature in this list. Perhaps the idea of fucking her gave Hux a cheap thrill, the thought making him feel like more of a warlord than a flimsi-pusher. That was an appalling thought. However, if he did manage to get his greasy hands on her and have her squirming beneath him, at least he wouldn’t think he was doing her a favor. Nor would she think he was fucking her out of pity. It was a low bar.

“Stop that. You’re  _ adorable, _ ” came the voice from the next stall. “If he thinks he’s some sort of hero for making you come, he’s not worth your time.”

Rose sputtered. Their eyes met over the dividers. Rose bent down to shave her legs.

“Oh, so that’s what that thing is for! I always assumed it would be like, an old timey vibroblade, but flatter. Because it’s a razor. So people actually shave their legs?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.  _ Why?  _ I mean, I get why Poe shaves his face, can’t really see him with a moustache. But legs don’t grow beards.”

“Some people don’t think hairy legs are attractive.”

“Oh.”

Rose twisted to get the backs of her legs with broad swipes. Not her best work, but she hadn’t shaved in months. Nobody was going to see it. The desire to end...whatever this thing with Rey was also factored into her decision to leave racing stripes. 

She turned off the water, and wrapped herself in a towel. Outside of the cubicle, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She sighed. This would be a good chance to take a more risque picture for Hux, but of course she’d left her datapad in her room.

“Rey?”

“Yes?” 

“Did you bring your datapad in here?”

“Think so. It’s in the pocket of my poncho, if I brought it. Why?”

Rose gulped. She hadn’t told anyone but Leia how she was getting intel, and this shameful secret was eating away at her. “If it’s not any trouble, it would really help me if you could take a couple of pictures of me. In a towel.”

Rey emerged from her cubicle, fully dressed. “Sure. Just keep in mind that if this is for your Spacr account, you won’t get any respectful messages if you make it your profile picture.”

“It’s not for Spacr. Kriff, I HATE Spacr. I lied about my age to make a profile and wasted so much time on it when I was sixteen. Never got anything out of it.”

“Good to know,” said Rey morosely. “I only made my account two months ago. Did you know that if you turn on the Location feature, you can see who’s using it in your area? Like on this base?”

“Wait, people are using it here?”

“It’s all pilots and comms officers. I can see them, and they can see me, and if I swipe right on anyone it’ll be so awkward when we sit down in the mess hall. So I just look, then sit around feeling lonely. But at least I set my preferences to ‘woman seeking women’, so now nobody will get the wrong signals from me.” Rey sighed and sat down on a bench. She pulled the camera function up on her datapad. “But we need to talk about why you want me to take pictures of you wearing nothing but a towel.”

“My reasons are my own. If there’s anyone you like, just talk to them. I mean, they already saw you as ‘woman seeking women’ on Spacr, and if you see their profile in the same place, you know that you’re both single and want a girlfriend. Go for it.” 

“But what if they say no? And then we can’t leave the base, so…” Rey looked like she was going to cry. “It’s terrible. There are so many beautiful women here, but I can’t talk to any of them!”

“You’re the mind-reader.”

“Yes, but that would be so creepy! I can’t read their minds. I draw the line there.”

“Right. But you can read my mind all the time.” 

“It’s not my fault you think loudly,” Rey replied. “I told you, I’m not even trying to hear you. Let’s take some pictures. Is there some guy you like? Have you two met in person?”

Rose rolled her eyes. Rey was acting like the ability to read minds and lift giant boulders with a thought meant she had some Force-Given duty to protect her.

“No, and yes.”

“Wait, what does that mean?”

“I don’t like him, but we have met in real life.”

“So why do you send him pictures of you?”

“He gives me stuff in return.”

“Like...a sugar daddy?”

“NO!” Rose shuddered. But wasn’t that what he was to her, in a way? He didn’t pay her outright, that was true, but those plans were worth thousands of credits or more.

“Ok. Even if you did have a sugar daddy, I don’t judge. A job’s a job.”

“I’m serious! It’s not like that! I don’t send him nudes.”

“Whatever you say. Now, let’s see. If you sat on the sink and let your legs dangle, that would really show them off. And maybe lower the towel a little bit; I can’t see your cleavage from here.”

  
  
  
  



	9. It's a Date

Rose scrolled through the pictures Rey sent her. She hardly recognized the woman staring back. Her hair was plastered to her shoulders, still wet. One strand trailed down her cheek. She’d wanted to slick it back, but Rey stopped her. “It looks better like that,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the shower, and the humiliation of asking her friend to take... _ indecent _ pictures of her. Above the crease of the towel, her cleavage peeked out. Zooming in, she could see that it was still lightly beaded with water. 

Getting her facial expression right was hard. The first few tries, Rey had scolded her for glaring at the camera. 

“Imagine you’re looking at this guy, and that he’ll give you whatever you want right afterwards. Pretend I’m not here.”

Rose did the opposite of following Rey’s advice; thinking about Rey instead of Hux made it easier to give a big cheeky grin. 

Now she sat in the mess hall with Rey over a couple of muffins and a mug of caf, poring over her friend’s amateur portfolio. 

“This doesn’t look like me,” she groaned. 

“You look like a pinup,” said Rey. 

“Ugh. I don’t want him to think I’m too easy. Maybe I’ll just send him some more of me in my pyjamas instead.”

Rey paused with her muffin halfway to her mouth. “Some  _ more  _ of you in your pyjamas?”

“I told you, I’ve already sent him stuff,” she said wretchedly. 

“And he gives you stuff in return? But it’s not a sugar daddy thing. So does he send you flowers? Chocolate? Poetry? Pictures of his junk?”

“STUFF,” snapped Rose. “I don’t ask you questions about your personal life, and I’ll thank you not to pry into mine. Thanks for the pictures, Rey, but I don’t think I’ll use them.”

“Looking like a pinup isn’t a bad thing,” Rey interjected. “Pinup models and pornstars aren’t really the same thing. Pinups come across as people who are just living their life and happen to look sexy while doing it, while pornstars are going more for the sex aspect of it. You’d make a great pinup model, but I can’t really imagine you doing porn.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence.” Rose gulped down more caf. The image of Rey holding a camera on the set of a porn studio seared itself into her mind. 

“I didn’t mean it to sound like an insult. Look. You’re pretty, but I’ve heard some of your thoughts. You’re into relationships, intense ones. You’re not much for casual sex, but that’s because you don’t really like it. So keep on doing whatever it is you’re doing with your guy if you’re comfortable with it and it pays, but don’t do porn.”

“I wasn’t PLANNING on switching careers and going into porn!”

Finn and Poe arrived at their table, bearing their own trays. 

“What? Who’s going into porn?” Poe wiggled his eyebrows. “No judgement. We’re all broke enough as it is.”

“Nobody,” Rose moaned. Before she could question her decision, she sent the best of Rey’s pictures off to Hux with a short message:  _ Now let’s see what you’ve got for me. Awaiting your reply. _

“Rose is messaging someone,” her traitorous friend said. 

“I knew it,” Finn said, then proceeded to stuff his mouth with pastry.

“You did not.” Poe glanced over to her. “Who is he? Or she? Or neither?”

“Don’t know their gender,” Finn said, coming up for air. He was raised on tasteless ration-bars, and like Rey viewed food as something to inhale as quickly and frequently as possible. “But I know they gave Rose everything we know about Exegol. You missed some stuff when you were out on patrol. Either they’re madly in love with her, or they HATE their job. Or it could be both.” He grinned at Poe and threw his arm over his shoulders. Poe leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek.

Rose and Rey both made gagging noises. Finn and Poe’s courtship was charming at first, but now their constant affection for each other was overly saccharine, as though they were newlyweds on a honeymoon, and not soldiers mired in a too-long war.

“Get a room, or make us maids of honor at your wedding,” Rose said. 

Finn looked guiltily downwards.”Um…”

Poe made shushing motions towards Finn. Rose peered at Poe, and noticed that he no longer wore his mother’s ring on the chain around his neck. On closer inspection, that ring now glinted on Finn’s finger.

“We eloped,” Finn said softly. “C-3P0 did the ceremony. We figured that we don’t know how much time we have left in the Galaxy, but we wanted to get married.”

“After the war we’ll have a big party,” Poe reassured them. “You two plus Connix will be maids of honor, we’ll see if we can get Leia to do the ceremony, everyone’s invited. But for now, we decided that we didn’t want to make a fuss. The war’s more important right now.”

Rose nodded assent. 

“I wish I could have seen the wedding,” Rey said. “The only weddings I’ve ever seen were on Jakku, and they were usually just a procession of old speeders where the local warlord would show off his new wife. They were depressing and boring. Until that one time when the wives teamed up, rescued the girl, murdered him, and blew up all the speeders. That was nice. I’m told that these weren’t normal, though.”

Poe choked on his caf. "No. Usually, a wedding is a happy occasion."

Rey glanced at Rose, and she could see her connect the dots. Rose messaged some unknown person in exchange for “stuff”. A First Order defector gave her intel. 

“Your guy is the spy,” Rey muttered. “Okay, that makes sense. I think the First Order spy likes Rose. Rose sends him pictures of herself, he sends us intel.”

Rose put her face in her hands. Rey was a pleasant companion, but no secret was ever safe with her. Growing up alone in the desert (where she talked to herself when the sun wasn’t too brutal) plus awareness of other people’s surface thoughts and emotional states meant that she thought everyone else knew these things about one another too. 

Finn laughed. “If they’re First Order, and an officer, you won’t have to send them nudes to have them count it as porn. When I was a kid, there was one little holovid that we passed around and watched in secret. We thought it was the most scandalous, sexual thing ever. It was a commercial for swimwear. Full-body suits, not even bikinis.”

Rose blushed. 

“Hmm,” Finn continued. “So our anonymous spy likes Rose, and has to loathe his job and his coworkers to send her all that stuff. I think I might be able to guess at his identity. If he is who I think he is, he’s not a bad sort if he’s separated from the rest of the officers. He was always on the brink of a panic attack when I knew him. He’s never caught a break in his life. I think he could be persuaded to join us, if it’s framed more as an appeal to decency and less as a betrayal of the First Order. I think he and Rose would make a cute couple, actually.”

Rose’s jaw dropped. Never in a thousand years would she describe Hux as “not a bad sort”, nor could he ever be swayed with an “appeal to decency.”

“Yeah, Lieutenant Mitaka’s all right,” Finn continued.

“Mhmm,” Rose said noncommittally. Let them think that she was messaging some faceless boot-licker whose worst crime was filing paperwork to enable planetary genocide. She wished this were the case. Her datapad pinged. It was Hux:

_ We need to stop talking about sensitive topics on this line. Near-miss during the end of shift today. Got your photo, forgot to silence it & sound went off. Allegiant General Pryde scolded me, confiscated the datapad, & opened the message. He saw the picture. Proceeded to yell at me for “contacting a cam-girl” during work hours. I tried to salvage the situation and defend your honor. _

_ What did you do?,  _ Rose typed frantically, trying to keep her expression neutral.

_ I told him that you weren’t a cam-girl, that you were my fiance.  _

Rose tried not to break the datapad as she clenched it ever tighter.  _ I would never marry you, not even if you were the last human man alive and I the last woman.  _

_ I know. But I tried to look after your reputation. He kept asking about you. I said that you were very shy, modest, a homebody. That you spent every spare moment of your time working at your job as a draft engineer for Sienar, doing chores at home, feeding soup to orphans, and looking after your old mother. _

Rose snorted. Thanks to him, her mother was dead.

_ He wanted to know when our wedding was scheduled for,  _ Hux typed back.  _ And some other things that don’t bear repeating. You aren’t pregnant, are you? If you are, and word gets out, they’ll all think it’s mine, and they’ll garnish my wages for Child Support. _

_ No. Not pregnant.  _

_ Good. I mean, if you want a kid someday, good for you. But apparently everyone now thinks that either I am paying you a tidy salary to send me pictures, or that I’ve knocked you up and we’re trying to do the decent thing. _

Rose had no answer to that.

_ Are you free at the end of this week, after 8? _

She inhaled sharply.  _ I might be. Why? _

_ There’s an official gala for the new fleet then. Or, the old fleet back from the days of the Empire that nobody bothered to tell me about. We are required to bring a plus-one. As few people believe you exist, it would be auspicious for you to arrive with me. Also, it would be a good opportunity for you to gather intelligence. _

_ I said I wouldn’t meet you in person. I still won’t. _

_ Fine. But it will make it suspicious if I mention you, and you’re never seen again. If you’re lucky, Pryde will think you’re a cam-girl. If we’re not, he’ll look at my message transmissions more critically and my intel leaks could end sooner than I’d like. On that subject, we need to move this to a more secure line. _

_ This sounds like a trap. I’ll go to you, and I’ll never be seen again. _

His reply to this was swift:  _ If I wanted you dead, I would have shot you after you bit my finger on the Finalizer.  _

Rose’s breath hitched. Fair point. She shivered, remembering the bite of the binders and the hard, cold floor.  _ So you don’t want me dead, but how do I know that I won’t end up tied to something in an interrogation room? _

_ It’s too much work to tie someone up. I nearly failed the week of basic training when we had to tie knots. Don’t worry about that. _

_ I only have your word for it.  _ She imagined herself tied to Hux’s desk chair, getting mauled and eaten alive by Millicent. 

_ I keep my word.  _

She still didn’t trust him, though she had an idea to secure his compliance:  _ If I go to this stupid gala with you all dressed up and I get out alive and safe on a neutral planet, I’ll give you a blowjob.  _

This was quite a leap, especially since she didn’t send nudes, but she had taken Hux’s entire hand up to the wrist in her mouth at once. A dick would probably be easier to suck on. She didn’t know because she’d never given anyone a blowjob before (though she’d been kissed and fucked), but she had the Holonet’s supply of sex tips and a waterbottle with a long, narrow neck that she could use to practice deepthroating.

It sounded awful, but she would keep her clothes on. It wouldn’t be that much different from swallowing his hand. It was even  _ less  _ kinky than the biting had been.

_ Are you sure you want to do that? _

No, she thought, she wasn’t. But it seemed like a good idea.  _ Yes. If I am alive, safe, and get a bit of information after this night, you will get a blowjob. Just give me the details of this event, and arrange transport. I’m sure I’ll get shot down if I arrive in one of our ships. _

She’d have to talk with Leia. This was big. Hopefully, his cock wouldn’t be. 

_ Wonderful. It’s a deal. I will send you the details of this event and a link to a new, secure channel. I will delete this one afterwards. I look forward to seeing you then. One thing: I told Pryde your name was Ottoline. Remember that. _

_ OTTOLINE?! _

_ I had to make something up on the spot. It’s not the done thing for Imperial families to name their children after flowers.  _

Rose began to laugh, stifling her mad cackles with her fist. 

“What?” Rey, Finn, and Poe looked at her, concerned.

“He asked me on a date,” she wheezed. “I said yes.”


	10. Identity

“My name is Ottoline now,” Rose mused, gazing at Hux’s twitchy face on the screen of her datapad. “ _ Ottoline.  _ I guess my parents hated me.”

“It’s a perfectly good name.”

“For someone who dies of shock after seeing a bare knee, perhaps.”

Hux shook his head. “It’s done. Improvisational theatre is not my strength. Now, you need a last name too.”

“Yeah. Where did we meet? I feel like we should have an answer to that question.”

“Arkanis.”

“We met at school?”

“It was your homeworld as well. You did post-undergraduate study for Officers’ Training School at the main Upper Academy. You left the Army when your father died and your mother became unwell, after your five years were up. You now work for Sienar. Remotely. Your work can be done at home and you are a very private person. We kept in touch after your honorable discharge, and it turned into a distance relationship.”

Rose looked at Hux’s red hair and moon-pale skin. “Nobody’s going to buy that. I don’t look Arkanian!”

“Planets are big places. Humanity has a ton of genetic diversity. If everyone from everywhere looked alike, something went horribly wrong. It might be a bit too much work to have you impersonate someone from----” and here Hux said something Rose could not pronounce, “we can say you’re from the Frozen Isles and people will attribute any differences in your mannerisms to the fact that the Frozen Isles are across the sea from my homeland and culturally distinct. ‘Ottoline’ would be an unusual name for an Islander, but we can explain that by saying that your family is mixed and your father was from the south. And dead, so nobody will try to look him up.”

Rose nodded. “Okay. Dead father, sick mother that I have to take care of, and I work from home. What’s my last name?”

Hux thought for a bit. “Sondian. That’s the most common surname on the Home Islands. If someone heard it and wanted to look you up, they’ll have trouble. They might even find another Ottoline Sondian out there; both names are common and intermarriage has increased between people from the Islands and the Continent. Remember your last name. As we are ostensibly engaged to be married, we will likely be questioned on whether I will take your surname in marriage or keep mine for professional reasons. Unlike the majority of Imperial cultures, only the bride's name counts on Arkanis .”

“Ah.” She did a Holonet search for the “Frozen Isles, Arkanis”, and was startled to find people who looked slightly like her wrapped from head to toe in puffy robes. She searched for “formal wear, Frozen Isles” and found a beautiful woman in a long red dress, with a matching, short veil that covered her nose and chin. It looked tucked in under her ears. 

“At least I can hide my face, I think. That makes things easier.”

Hux shook his head. “You can’t. Not if you don’t want to attract unwelcome attention for impersonating royalty.”

“What?” She found more pictures for “Frozen Isles Fashion”; crowds of women and men all with the same curious veils across their faces. Some were of dark colors, others were spangled with sequins. Maybe this place was like Naboo, and royalty grew on trees. “Surely you don’t have a whole stadium full of princes, dukes, and princesses over there. Who go to concerts and take public shuttles.”

Hux chuckled. “I should explain. It is considered proper etiquette in the Frozen Isles to wear a face mask on public transit or in a crowded area, but unforgivably rude to wear the same garment to dinner, or to a formal event. Unless one is royalty”

“Why? So the princelings and queens can mingle with the commoners in the market but get left alone in the palace?”

“A few centuries ago, there was a great plague on Arkanis,” Hux said. “That is why those masks are worn in public. By most accounts there is no need for them anymore, but it has reduced the spread of colds. If one was to wear a face-mask to a smaller gathering, that would imply that the possibility of contagion is present there, and that the wearer is far too important to risk exposure.”

“Oh,” said Rose slowly. “So us common folks are expendable. Got it. I’ve never heard of this before.”

“They only caught on in the Frozen Isles. I think it was because their medical technology and viral tracking systems were ahead of the rest of Arkanis. Besides that, the southern lands were in a famine at the time of the plague. Nobody could scrape up dinner, much less clean cloths to put over the face. But I digress. Yes, you will have to show your face.”

“What should I wear?”, Rose asked. “I only have a week to find it, whatever it is.”

“Something nice,” Hux said. “Just not your jumpsuit or your pyjamas.”

“Aww. They’re the height of fashion,” Rose deadpanned. 

“I didn’t say they  _ weren’t  _ nice. On you.” A blush rose in Hux’s cheeks. “You just shouldn’t wear those, that’s all. Make sure whatever it is covers the ankle.”

Millicent leapt up onto Hux’s desk and batted a stylus about. “Millie! That is an expensive one, you mustn’t chew on it…” The stylus fell to the floor with a clatter. Hux disappeared beneath the desk. There was a thumping noise, and he resurfaced with the stylus in hand, an affronted Millicent slinking away and sitting atop another tablet to wash herself. 

Now was the time to ask a question that had been eating away at her for weeks. “Do your people actually think the ankle is an erogenous zone, or is that just you and your weird kinks?”

Hux’s face was flushed to nearly the color of his hair. “Showing the ankle is  _ indecent. _ ”

“You showed me your wrists, the first time we met. There was a gap between the glove and the sleeve. We weren’t properly introduced before that. Disgraceful.”

Hux shifted in his seat. “That lapse was unintentional.” His bottom lip dropped and would have trembled had he not reined himself in at the last second. This slipping composure might have gone unnoticed by the casual observer, but Rose was turning into a keen connoisseur of the tiny facial expressions of Armitage Hux. She filed this reaction away for later analysis.

The door-buzzer rang. “Kriff. I need to get that. I’ll minimize the videochat so whoever it is can’t see the screen. I’ve encrypted my console so it can’t be accessed without a fingerprint, and it will lock if I’m away for any length of time.” He hit a button. Rose could still see the room, and Hux. She prayed whoever was coming to call wouldn’t see her.

Hux pressed the door panel and it slid open. A sour-faced man with grey hair that she presumed was Allegiant General Pryde strode up, an aide behind him.

“General Hux?”

Hux stood to reluctant attention. “Sir?”

“Urgent communique for you. I was asked to convey this as a favor.”

“Oh? About what, sir?”

“Your mother.”

The aide wheezed, then stifled his laughter in horror.

“This wasn’t funny the first time, and it is certainly not humorous now,” Hux spat. “But since you have come here to humiliate me, fine. Say something about my mother.”

Pryde stepped back, swagger stick under his arm, a glare on his face that would curdle bantha milk. “She worked so hard, sacrificed so much, and deserved a better son than yourself for her pains?”

“Why are you wasting your time and mine?” 

Pryde coughed.

“Sir,” Hux added hastily. 

“I can see you’re not in the mood to listen,” Pryde said. “So I will not trouble myself further. At this juncture, I can safely say that I attempted to fulfil her request. Have a good afternoon, General Hux.” He made this pleasantry sound like a threat. Pryde turned on his heel and left.

Hux returned to the console, paler than usual. 

“Who made the request?”, Rose asked. “Do you think he suspects you?”

“I haven’t a clue what he was talking about,” Hux flatly stated. “He’s always trying to get a rise out of me.”

“He got one, alright” Rose muttered.

“What was that? I don’t think your mic’s picking up.”

“Nothing.”


End file.
